


a wish and a prayer and a pained cry cursing or pleading for a god

by gloomypooltoy (orphan_account)



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: a season 6 ending rewrite basically, if youre a hardcore skybound stan you probably shouldnt read this, minor blood desc tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23923027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/gloomypooltoy
Summary: Jay has to deal with the consequences of his actions after Season 6. He doesn't reach Nya, and his final wish is something different.---i put this in the tags but if youre a hardcore skybound stan or maybe even a jaya stan then i might skip this? its basically a season 6 ending rewrite because it SUCKEDfeel free to share ur thoughts in the comments anyway
Relationships: (barely...i justthink theyre 10x better than jaya), Cole & Jay Walker, Cole/Jay Walker, Nya & Jay Walker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	a wish and a prayer and a pained cry cursing or pleading for a god

He doesn’t get the chance to try and reach her as the artificial world around them crumbles.

Her dress was torn from it’s shoulder to its hem as she collapsed, crying out his name. Nadakhan crumpled a few feet behind her, having thrown her to the ground when the venom struck their chests. The rest of the ninja reverted from their gold forms, and he could see Cole and Lloyd on the opposite end of the island look around helplessly for something to grab onto. It hurts when he sees Kai realize what was happening to his sister.

Then the earth disappears from underneath him. He latches onto and then loses grip of lamposts, or branches, or pieces of rubble as he falls. He’s spinning and somersaulting and can’t tell how close he is to smashing into the earth when a sheet of ice explodes underneath him. It _hurts_ when his hip collides with the ice, but said ice is shaped into a ramp that tumbles him safely onto solid ground.

Zane and Kai land in the same clearing of rubble as he does. The sky is a stinging, smoky orange. A chunk of earth falls onto a car just past them, giving Jay another jolt of adrenaline. He spots the sword of souls pinned under rubble. Its blade is snapped in half. His hip and back begin to ache and the back of his mouth tastes like pennies. 

A moving lump forms into Kai. It gets up with unsteady legs. “...you killed her.”.

Kai’s lips are split. Blood is smeared on the side of his face. His bad eye is swelling up into an angry red. “You _killed_ her _._ You _fucking killed her!_ ”

Jay forgets about his pain as he scrambles across the ground to back away from Kai. “ _I’ll fucking kill you._ I’ll fucking _kill you, you fucking killed her!_ ”

Kai continues his screaming as Zane suddenly grabs him under his arms and jerks him away. “ _She’s dead! She’s dead, she’s dead, I have to kill him!_ ” Each “dead” is shrill and agonized by Kai tilting his bleeding mouth up to the sky. Kai howls and thrashes against Zane’s metal grip, and a spike of anxiety shoots up inside Jay when Kai’s hands erupt into flames.

They sputter when Zane joins them with his own, then hiss sharply. Steam rises into the air. Kai sobs between wordless screams. His fire almost overtakes Zane’s frost a few times. But the steam continues to pour as Zane twists Kai away from Jay, towards a debris heap. As Zane does so, Jay catches Zane's disappointed gaze pass over him, and in the opposite direction of his anxiety spike, his stomach plummets.

Kai is held tightly on the other side of the clearing. Jay drags himself up into a sitting position, where he can only see Zane’s creased brows aiming at the ground over Kai’s shoulder. The minutes tick by and Kai’s wailing doesn’t subside.

Did Jay kill her? Of course that would be what Kai took from Jay’s retelling of what had led to the sword of souls, and then the wedding. Nadakhan had never driven Jay to "wish it all away", but the djinn ruined Jay's ending with Nya anyway. 

He chokes on the blood in his mouth for thinking of Nya that way. Especially now.

The lighthouse was where this self awareness had started to set in. It was where he realized the nature of his and Nya's relationship. During their time alone, he had talked too much; the quiet made him nervous. The only noise besides their own occasional voices, and Echo Zane’s tinny voice-box, were the gray waves lapping against the rocks and wary seagull calls overhead. She didn’t talk to him. She’d opened up a little and then brushed it off immediately, but she hadn’t truly talked with him. 

Presently, tears burn his cheeks. He concentrates on how much his body aches instead of the heavy pit weighing inside him.

Zane leans his mouth next to Kai's ear to whisper something. Jay can see Kai shaking, but he isn’t crying out anymore. Gradually, Zane gets up, one of his hands still holding one of Kai’s. Kai gets up even slower. They turn towards Jay.

“We need to find the others,” Zane says. Usually when he has to give orders in place of Lloyd or Cole, there is an air of determination around him. Now his expression is hollow.

Jay trails a few feet behind as the three of them clamber over a piece of a roof towards the collapsed temple, since Zane made an estimate that the rest of their team would likely end up in that area. Nothing hangs in the sky anymore, save for moving specks among the smoke and clouds. They must be the remaining pirate ships. Jay hopes Dogshank and Flintlocke are still willing to help them.

They’re almost at the mass of the temple’s remains, and neither Cole nor Lloyd are in sight. Jay doesn’t want to go further. He doesn’t want to go anywhere near where Nya’s, or possibly another ninja’s body, may be trapped under the rubble. 

“They’re not here,” his voice rises into a waver. “Where are they?” He stops a decent amount away from where they’d been fighting-- it seemed like ages ago --and Zane and Kai slow to a halt ahead of him.

“Do not panic, Jay,” Zane says. “They may have gone searching for us, just as we did, or to reunite with Wu and the rest. We should attempt to make our way back to the city where Wu is.”

“No,” Kai speaks up. “The venom didn’t kill Nadakhan.” His voice is hoarse and wet. “It only slowed him down and got rid of the powers he used. You still have your last wish, don’t you?”

Jay freezes. He searches for something to answer Kai with. Zane steps in, “We must find the others first, Kai.”

“Hell no!” Kai objects. “We need to find that genie and set shit straight before he runs off somewhere!”

“His chance of survival was disproportionately low considering his location and weakened state. We must find the others first.”

The thought of making it so that all of this had never happened has only crossed Jay’s mind as a desperate wish, but it now being plausible sparks hope which he tries not to let overtake him. 

Kai glares at Zane. The taller ninja has dropped his gentleness as he stares down Kai. He repeats flatly, “We must find the other first.”

Jay swallows. Then says, “We get it Kai, okay? But Zane is right--”

“Oh, shut up!” Kai snaps, breaking his staredown with Zane. “You _really_ think I wanna hear what you have to say right now?” There’s a moment of quiet that Jay takes to avert his gaze.

Zane sighs. “Trust me when I tell you that I have no intention of letting Nadakhan escape,” His voice has a gentle sheen to it again. “But we have a significantly better chance of stopping him after we regroup.”

“...fine.”

Zane uses his navigation system to lead them to one of Ninjago City’s wide, open roads where only outlying islands have crash-landed. It’s decided they won’t use their dragons until they have a plan to deal with the rest of the lingering sky-pirates. So it’s tiresome wandering upon the road until Zane obtains a signal and radios in Wu. Then it’s a long walk to where the citizens and their team have evacuated. As the Bounty comes into view, the skyscrapers fade into coastal businesses and ports. A small ship lingers above it and Jay recognizes it as the ship Flintlocke and Dogshank had hunted Nadakhan from. Upon arrival, Wu informs Kai, Zane, and Jay that the rest of the ninja are onboard, while the “replacement team” is managing the citizens.

“We’ve retrieved the Bounty from the police commissioner,” Wu tells them. “There is still much to be done. Hurry.”

Jay breathes a sigh of relief when he spots Lloyd on the Bounty’s deck. His face is smooth and youthful, free of Nadakhan’s accursed magic.

“Where’s Cole? Is he alright?” Jay asks him.

Lloyd has a wobbly frown and doesn’t look Jay in the eye. Jay is about to frantically ask again but Lloyd cuts him off, “He’s fine-- he’s fine.” Lloyd turns his head away from Jay. “He carried Nya here. He’s somewhere inside.”

Jay steps back from the railing Lloyd is leaning against. Kai and Zane are waiting by the Bounty’s mast, one of them with his arms crossed and head down, the second watching the entrance to the hull intently.

Wu comes out of the hull with Cole following him. The five remaining ninja group up around Wu. Jay sidles his eyes over to Cole in their team’s circle.

Cole isn’t smiling his big warm smile, that Jay always loves to see. But his empty expression softens when their eyes meet. Jay feels as if he might burst into tears, and he wants nothing more than to be sitting on his bed with the company of a dim lantern and Cole, pouring his heart out.

Instead he listens to Wu, who explains that Flintlocke and Dogshank are waiting for them; they had seized Nadakhan when the islands crash landed, and encouraged Lloyd and Cole to head back and inform the rest of the team. Their ship was the one hovering above the Bounty. They didn’t want to get close enough to the ground so that Nadakhan could teleport out of their reach, which meant keeping aloft an amount considerable for a djinn who’s able to levitate. Cole and Lloyd didn’t know exactly how Nadakhan was being restrained, but Flintlocke supposedly had some Tiger Widow venom left. The ninja and the two sky-pirates were going to come up with a plan to deal with Nadakhan and the destruction of their collective home.

A ladder is tossed from the side of the pirate ship once Wu is done, and calls up to the ship, so that the ninja can climb aboard. Dogshank is at the end of the ladder; Jay swallows his nerves as Dogshank hoists the ladder back up. His trust in her is still thin.

“Flintlocke is watchin’ Nadakhan in the brig,” Dogshank says. “We got ‘im locked up and dosed with tiger venom every few minutes.”

“Doesn’t he still have infinite wishes? How are you stopping that?” Lloyd asks.

“ He doesn’t got anymore wishes now,” Dogshank shakes her head. She quotes with a low voice, “‘Til death do us part.’”

Silence hangs heavily for a moment. 

“Well. Come on, then,” Dogshank says, and they follow her to the brig.

Ever since the first speck of dirt had crumbled off the makeshift islands, a creeping dread had arisen in Jay, elevated by Kai's rage and the mass devastation surrounding him. He doubts he’ll ever feel even a drop at ease after all of that.

But worse is the eruption of panic when he enters the brig. He can physically feel his eyelids stretch and his breath stutter. Nadakhan is hunched over in the corner of his cell, creaking his head toward the ninja as they walk in. Jay stops breathing completely.

Flintlocke points his gun away from Nadakhan’s head which makes Jay want to scream. But he doesn’t. He stands in terror, and Flintlocke’s voice is muffled and numb behind him.

“Hey, Jay. Hey! You okay, bud?”

Cole has a hand on Jay’s arm. Jay snaps his gaze to Cole and then twitches his arm away from Cole’s concern. Except for Nadakhan, the djinn is forlorn at the ground once more, everybody is staring at Jay. 

"I’m- yeah. Sorry. I’m okay. Let’s do this.” He takes a deep breath as Kai begins to speak.

“So we’re gonna use Jay’s wish to fix all this shit, and the wish has to be good enough that he can't twist it.”

“And then when Jay uses his wish, we get rid of Nadakhan… but the teapot is gone… can we trap him some other way?” Cole questions.

Flintlocke shrugs. “If we hurry, we still got a whole canteen of that venom left. Enough should be able to knock ‘im cold. If he ain’t dead then, I can plain shoot him.”

Cole winces. He says reluctantly, “Do we really need to kill him? I mean, he’s not a threat if he’s--”  
“Uh, _yeah_ ,” Kai scoffs at Cole. “Obviously, we’re going to kill him.”

“Really…” Cole begins to argue back, and Lloyd takes Cole’s side. Kai takes an angry lunge towards Cole, ready to bite his head off, while Zane urges them to calm down. If Jay had the courage, he would side with Kai using a sheepish peep.

“Hey, hey, hey, all of you, _listen!_ ” Flintlocke hollers. They immediately go quiet. “I know you ninja aren’t on board with the whole killing thing, but what’d happen if somebody else got their hands on him down th’ line? Same thing all over again! ‘Sides, we should put him out of his misery; I’d rather die than get trapped in a teapot for a couple hun’red centuries. Us pirates know when it's jus' dirty work, an' when someone really needs a killin'."

Cole crosses his arms silently in compliance, looking rather unhappy. The ninja and Dogshank leave the brig, and acquire a piece of parchment to write out the wish. Flintlocke keeps an eye on Nadakhan. Jay gets nervous again when Flintlocke insists that they be quick.

The main objective of the wish is to restore the damage that had befallen Ninjago which would, above all else, bring back Nya. Jay wanted so badly to say sorry to her. He also wanted badly for everything to go back to normal. But he knew only one of those would be possible.

A few sentences in they worry about whether or not all the details of their request can count as just one wish. Kai says that he fit multiple requests into one wish, but it was a jumble of panic so it didn’t go expectedly. Jay is reminded that Kai was the one trapped in the sword the longest. Kai was barely responsive when Jay pulled him out of the green, crystallized oceanic abyss of the sword.

Dogshank suggested bringing back the rest of her crew, who had been vanquished by Nadakhan. The ninja tried not to reveal their suspicion when they asked her, “What are you all going to do after this?”

Dogshank shrugs, a massive movement due to her shoulders' size. “We still got an airship. I s’pose we could continue sailing the seas, or the skies. No more plunderin’ for us though. And if Doubloon, Monkeywrench, or Clancee-- well, no, not Clancee. Who knows if he’ll even want to stay a pirate...” she shakes her head, and returns her projection towards the ninja. “And if any of them ‘cause a ruckus I understand if you hafta take care of them.”

They also consider using the wish to somehow eradicate Nadakhan, but aren’t sure how to do so without breaking the rule that prevents them from inflicting harm upon others. Besides, Zane says, it’s best to proceed with what they planned so that they don’t have to reword the already contrived wish. He’s the one who most often points out loopholes in the wish’s terminology. Dogshank is also one to do so, since she’s witnessed Nadakhan’s trickery prey on countless unsuspecting sailors time and time again.

When the wish is reviewed a dozen times over the ninja return to the brig; the wish is in Jay’s hands now. A possible solution to his mistake, carefully written in ink, ready to take into effect with equally as carefully spoken words. He stands in front of Nadakhan pinching the corners of the paper with his thumbs. Flintlocke steps to the side, but his handgun remains dead-set on Nadakhan’s head. The venom must have worn off, at least to an extent, because Nadakhan can sit up, only sort of slumped over, and he needs to be able to use his magic anyway. Jay reminds himself that there’s nothing Nadakhan can do. The wish is fine. Nadakhan can't hurt them anymore.

He glues his eyes to the wish.

Everybody knew what Jay had done now. Maybe not everybody in Ninjago, or even Ninjago City, but his parents, Cole, Nya-- if whatever force pulled the strings of the world took pity on them and let Nadakhan grant his wish, his team, the people who were his everybody knew of his selfishness. This wasn’t like when Cole got hung up on a tiny mistake, or exposed a small lapse of vulnerability, pinning his value on dancing or being the strong one. Nobody faulted him for that. Jay had shattered their trust in him, and he had to earn it back. That was part of the heaviness in his stomach.

Or could simply wish it all away. All of his problems gone, sending him...elsewhere, since the sword of souls was gone.

He could wish that none of it had ever happened. That nobody had never found the teapot in the first place, or that they had never been delayed on their way to Stiix. And that nobody would have any memory of everything from then to now. There would be no consequences to his actions, and things could be normal. Because he knew better, and they wouldn’t happen again.

The ninja are watching him patiently.

He begins. “I wish for you to take my words as they are spoken at face value, precisely and with no implications or interpretations other than their face value; what I say will take into effect twenty minutes after I conclude the wish,” he has to gasp for air. When he starts again he paces his breathing more attentively. “I wish that every physical...imp...implementation, your magic has influenced Ninjago's solid mass' physicals structure with would be restored, by returning the… altered pieces of mass to their state prior to your magic taking effect, all in their accurate locations and placed seamlessly into the earth; this process will take forty minutes so that any bystanders have time to evade or prepare for the restoring--er, restoration of Ninjago and also,”

He takes another breath. “Th-that Nya’s biological functions would return to working order with no retained effects, as they were before the tiger widow venom came into contact with her. Let this be a... gradual process that is well completed throughout more than half an hour, but less than an hour so that it is painless and natural...also, teleport Doubloon, Clancee, and Monkeywrench from wherever they were vanquished, whether it be within this realm or otherwise; do so without physically or cog...cognitively harming them; their destination will be safely on top of the deck of the Raid Zeppelin that I am reciting this wish inside of.”

The corners of the papers are furled and withered from his pinching now. He looks up to indicate he’s done. Nadakhan’s eyebrows are furled and his expression is grim. There’s a tiredness to his eyes that almost makes Jay think Nadakhan wouldn’t turn their wish against them no matter how much it gaped with inconsistencies. Nadakhan gnashes his teeth across each other for a moment and then sighs, “Your wish is yours to keep.”

The room is still. The wish’s effects wouldn’t immediately be visible from where they were. They would report back to Flintlocke whether or not he could carry on with their mission.

Flintlocke says, “You all can up and leave if you like.” The ninja do so with Kai taking the lead, throwing down the ladder and nearly sliding down to the bounty.

Jay is the second to last to follow everybody down. Then Cole catches hold of him and Jay turns around a ways length from the ladder.

“Hey,” Cole says.

Jay swallows. “Hey.”

Cole turns his head over to the side of the Bounty. He probably sees Kai rush into the hull, with Lloyd and Zane following him or maybe staying back to watch the blue sky, blend into rust.

“Are you mad at me?” Jay says, trying to tame his voice’s natural whine.

Cole shakes his head and shrugs at the same time. “I don’t know...that was shitty, Jay.”

“I know,” his voice quivers and he bites his lip. “Do you forgive me?”

“Yeah...yeah. I forgive you."

“How can I make it right?”

Cole shrugs again. “Well say sorry to everyone, I guess, and see what they do. I don’t know if… everyone will be able to forgive you. And if they do it’ll take a long time.”

Jay nods a little. Then he chokes out, “I’m sorry.”

Cole closes the space between them with a hug. Jay’s tears seep into Cole’s gi as he buries his face in Cole’s arm, soft and strong, like a proper bed. Jay wraps his arm around his close friend’s ample waist, and Cole’s own arms cross over Jay’s back, petting his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> i know its kind of shitty for me to not make nya appear in the story physically but i had no idea how to tackle that emotional beat :( hopefully dat shit hurted anyway  
> that wish might also be riddled with inconsistinsies but lets just say nadakhan gave up and didnt bother to twist it at all


End file.
